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Six key challenges facing the drug and alcohol treatment system

By Alison Hill

12 March 2018

A perfect storm is brewing. Years of austerity, the degradation of public services, sluggish growth and falling wages are all contributing to increasing pressures on the poor and vulnerable in society. Drug and alcohol problems rarely sit in isolation; all too often they are tied up with an array of complex issues such as mental health, unemployment, homelessness, domestic violence and social deprivation. In the midst of all this, the drug and alcohol treatment system is under increasing strain and is facing a cocktail of different challenges. We set out six of them below. All of these will need to be tackled if the ambitions set out in the Government’s 2017 Drug Strategy are to be realised, and if we are to halt the record levels of drug-related deaths witnessed last year.